


Whether It Were Angels, Or Bright Stars A'Singing

by Overnighter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Angst, Christmas, Families of Choice, Gen, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 04:57:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overnighter/pseuds/Overnighter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bobby Singer gets an unexpected visit one Christmas Eve from an angel he's been avoiding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whether It Were Angels, Or Bright Stars A'Singing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valkrys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkrys/gifts).



There’s not a sound from the back bedroom, and Bobby sends a prayer of thanks to whomever it is that’s taking care of at least small mercies these days. He hated to sacrifice his last bottle of decent Irish whiskey, but if it kept Dean - and by extension, Sam - in a deep and dreamless sleep for once, it was worth it. 

It’s quiet in the house, especially since he hasn’t acquired a new hound yet. The last few just sort of drifted into his life, his yard, and stayed. He’d never had to go out looking before. Sort of like the Winchesters. 

He walks the perimeter of the house by rote, not really thinking much about anything. The salt lines are straight and sure, as always when Dean lays them, and the doors are locked tight against more ordinary predators. Even without a hound, it’s as safe as he can make it. It’s years too late for that, of course, but he can’t help but try. 

He gathers up the empty bottle and the whiskey glasses and brings them to the kitchen, leaving them in the sink for the morning. He doesn’t bother to turn on a light; he knows every inch of his house, and the soft glow of the dying fire casts deep shadows on the wall. He pauses for a moment when he hears a sigh, but it’s just the house settling around him in the deep winter chill. After a moment’s consideration, he grabs one of the dirty glasses from the sink, and digs out his second-best bottle from a high shelf. Both Dean and Sam are taller than he’ll ever be, but old habits die hard. 

He sinks back into his easy chair and swallows. The whiskey doesn’t burn going down, not like the rotgut he usually keeps around. Instead, it spreads warmth throughout him, a warmth he mostly avoided earlier as he coaxed the boys into drinking without taking the lead himself. 

It’s been years since he’s had someone living with him regular, someone here at the holidays, but it’s nice to have the Winchesters around. He knows that he was never their favorite as kids – Sam, especially, used to shrink away from him until the day that Bobby showed him his hidden library, his whole new world of books – but he’d always liked the rare occasions that John showed up with his boys in tow, liked the way the house filled up with noise and laughter and dirty socks and life, even if he’d never tell them. 

He’s grateful now to have them in his life again, even if the reasons are many and terrible. Jim, Caleb, their beloved and tyrannical father – they were the men who really shaped the boys’ lives, he thinks. Bobby was just their last, best hope, and he’d failed them in their hour of need. Still, they’d all been given another chance, another moment, and he wasn’t about to waste it. 

He’s half-asleep in the chair when the door blows open, and he supposes on tonight of all nights he shouldn’t really be surprised. He’s seen this man who’s not a man before, but only for a second, a moment. He’s briefly afraid, and wonders at the fact that he’s still capable, and he staggers to his feet, uncertain and sleepy. He wants to kneel, or take his hat off, or something, but the man – the angel - in front of him just smiles in a puzzled way and tilts his head to the side. 

“Why would you worship me when you hardly acknowledge my purpose?” he asks, and his voice is soothing, low. Bobby can’t remember if he spoke the last time, but this feels like a dream. 

“You – you’re not what I expected,” he confesses, finally, and Castiel just smiles again, a little warmer. 

“Things rarely are. Please, sit. I disturbed you.” 

It’s not an order, precisely, but Bobby obeys anyway, with an alacrity that surprises and alarms him, just a little. Like fear, obedience isn’t something he tends to cultivate anymore. 

“Why are you here?” he asks. The boys are sleeping, he wants them to keep sleeping, wants to give them a night without burdens, without memories – without this. It’s the only gift he can give them, really, and Castiel could tear it all away in moments. 

The angel – the angel inside a man, an ordinary man who asked for this, desired it – sits almost delicately on the couch across from him, avoiding the balled-up blankets where Dean and Sam had been hours before.

“I was glad to see that Dean is sleeping,” the angel says softly, and Bobby starts a little. “His burden is not one I could lift, but it pains me all the same."

“You’re not here for him, then?” 

“I am here for him, but I do not require his presence,” Castiel says in the same soothing voice, and Bobby wonders if angels feel emotion, even attachment. 

“Then what?” 

“There is much that is hard in this world. Dean and his – brother – have known little else. It makes them good soldiers, good men even, but it’s – it’s not a happy life.” As he says it, his mouth turns down, as though he realizes how absurd it is for that sentence – that consideration – to be voiced here. 

“I know that. That was true before Dean went to Hell, and it will be true when this is all over. John did the best he could – we all did – but there’s no getting around that.” 

He wishes it weren’t true, wishes the boys had better prospects, better memories, even, but he’s a hunter, and so are they. He can’t change the world, and he wouldn’t dare try. He sighs and drinks his whiskey, gesturing to the bottle on the table. Castiel smiles in amusement and shakes his head. 

“My – vessel – would not approve,” he says quietly. 

“How about you?” Bobby asks, sharper than he means to. Bobby’s skin itches with the knowledge - it feels wrong, like it always does, knowing there’s another inside the man across from him, hearing and seeing but trapped - and he wonders what sort of man surrenders like that, if submission is what Castiel - what his God - requires of Dean, of Sam, of them all. 

“I do not need or desire anything of the flesh,” he says softly. “That is one of our gifts – and our burdens.” 

“Why are you here?” Bobby asks, and Castiel shrugs, the motion sharp and wrong on his shoulders. 

“Dean is a vessel, too. Sam is a vessel. They were chosen. They – what they desire cannot matter, does not matter, but they’re still – men. Not weapons,” his voice is soft, but shot through with steel. “Someone should remember that. That’s what – I came to say that. Someone should remember that they are men.” 

Bobby sits back, grasping his empty glass a little too hard. 

“I know that. You came a long way to tell me something I already know,” he snaps. 

The angel doesn’t answer, just leans forward towards the coffee table, picks up the only other thing sitting beside the bottle of whiskey. 

“You don’t acknowledge the season, but every year this emerges, and stays through the New Year.” 

It’s an old hickory box, warped from years and elements. There’s a crooked pine tree carved into the lid, a cartoonish outline. It was a makework project, he thinks, one winter while the boys were here, left behind at the holidays, worried and anxious and trying so hard to be helpful that they were underfoot all the time. 

He can’t remember why they didn’t go to Jim’s, if Jim was the one who stumbled in three days after Christmas with John draped over his back, the boys white-lipped and tense beside him. But he remembers them at his table, heads bent together, snapping up at every distant sound. 

He can’t remember what kind of Christmas he put together for them, when it became clear that John wasn’t making it back in time, if at all. He thinks there might have been brake liners wrapped in newspaper and old paperbacks in sweatsocks. He remembers them huddled on the couch, knees up, silent and watchful - not like kids at all - and he remembers their solemn thank yous, the way they’d gravely presented him with the box as a gift, white faces attempting to smile politely. 

He remembers Sam - young enough to cry at all the blood, days later - and Dean’s fierce whispers. _He’ll be fine, Sammy. Fine. Stop crying._ And he remembers finding Dean, hours later, facedown and sobbing in his workshop, his hands still stained with his father’s blood. 

“It was gift,” he says finally. “It means something to me.” 

Castiel nods as if he’s passed a test. 

“Meaning is all,” he says finally, and Bobby gives in to his urge to roll his eyes. He appreciates that the kingdom of heaven appears to be getting its act together at long last but – divine or human – he still doesn’t suffer fools lightly. 

“Look, not that I don’t love a nice divine intervention as much as the next guy, but it’s late, and I’m cold and a little drunk, so if you’re done with the angel platitudes, Merry Christmas and don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out,” he says, standing up finally and reaching for bottle. He’s done drinking, but he’ll be damned if he’s leaving it here for the angel to stare at in his faintly disapproving way. 

Castiel reaches out and grasps his hand, and Bobby waits for lightning, for oblivion. It doesn’t come. Instead, the hand is dry and a little bit calloused where the tip of his finger rests against Bobby’s pulse point. 

“You think of them as family,” he says, and the soft voice is completely neutral. Bobby can’t tell if he’s overstepped a bound, and he doesn’t much care. 

“I’m as much family as they’ve got left,” he says simply. 

Castiel nods again and stands in a single, fluid motion. The fire is almost out now, and for a moment Bobby is sure he sees the shadow of, the hint of, wings behind him. 

“It is good that you remember. What they were. Who they are. It is good to remember that they’re just men,” he says. “I think they doubt that. You – it is good that they have someone,” he says. 

Bobby doesn’t remember Castiel releasing his hand, doesn’t remember anything after that at all. He wakes up on the couch, under one of the discarded blankets, his hat still on his head, and the bottle of whiskey uncapped on the table beside him. The hickory box is crooked and out of place beside it on the table, which is when Bobby is sure that it wasn’t just a dream. The house smells like bacon and coffee already. 

“Hey, old man. I thought the rules were no sleeping on the damn couch.” 

Dean’s voice is loud and cheerful. Bobby twists around behind him and sees him standing in the doorway, his cheeks pink from cold and the shadows under his eyes closer to grey than black for a change. He’s got his coat on, but it’s pulling awkwardly at the front, where he’s holding it bunched up against him. 

“Merry Christmas,” he says, and comes over to sit beside Bobby on the couch, the sharp, fresh air still clinging to him. “Look what Santa brought you.” 

He opens his coat and there’s a shivering, wet and dirty dog inside, cradled against his stomach. Its fur is matted and dirty; it’s impossible to tell what color the damn thing is, let alone what breed, but despite the fact that it's shivering and miserable, it leans forward and sniffs the hand Bobby holds out until its pink tongue comes out for a tentative lick. 

“I found him stuck half under the fence when I went to check on the Impala this morning. Snowed another few inches out there last night. What do you think? Cheyney? Obama? Maybe Hillary? What’s it look like to you?” Dean asks, giving the dog an absent scratch behind its ears. 

“I don’t know,” Bobby admits, feeling sheepish, “Usually I just let them tell me in their own way.” 

Dean nods like that makes complete sense and gingerly transfers the dog into Bobby’s arms. 

“Well, this one looks likes it’s telling you it needs a bath. And possibly that it ain’t housebroken. Good luck with that,” he says, and stands up, already shedding his coat. 

“Put that...” Bobby starts, but Dean finishes with a smirk, 

“In the laundry room, sir. That’s where I was headed. Want a cup of coffee? I’m going to go see if Sammy’s succeeded in burning down the house yet,” he says. 

Bobby nods, feeling the quick heartbeat of the dog in his arms. He’s going to need to dig out Rumsfeld’s old stuff, make sure the pup is hale and hearty and not too damaged to adept to life in the yard. Dean grins at him as if reading his mind. 

“You talk a good game, Bobby, but you’re a soft touch,” he says, and Bobby feels Dean’s hand drop down on his shoulder as he walks behind the couch, squeezing briefly until Bobby looks up. “Hey, I’m glad we’re – it’s good to be here today.” 

He walks off down the hall, his coat still balled up in his hands, already bellowing into the kitchen.

“Christ, Sammy, how hard can it be to scramble up a dozen eggs? We’ve got another mouth to feed.” 

Bobby looks down, and the dog in his lap wuffs softly, rearranging itself more comfortably with its nose against Bobby’s side. Bobby can still feel the pressure from Dean’s hand, as sharp and vivid as Dean’s only scar against his shoulder.


End file.
